The Sleepwalkers

by J. Gabriel Gates

  The director smiles.

  “My dear Mr. Bent, I am not the devil. The devil is sleeping now. But he’s rolling over in his sleep. He’s . . . stirring. You’ll hear his words for yourself soon enough, I assure you. When the sixty-six are sleeping in the cold with him, then you’ll hear his words like a trumpet. But for now, I ask once more that you BRING OUT YOUR FRIENDS.”

  Ron shakes his head.

  The clown face smiles.

  All Caleb sees is a flick of the director’s wrist and a streak of brown, and the lasso is around Ron’s neck. The director snaps his end of the rope back as fast as a cobra striking, and Ron is yanked forward. His knees hit the steps hard and he slides down and lands face-first in the grass with a “thud” that shakes Caleb where he stands. The director keeps the rope taut and pulls Ron across the grass toward him. Ron arches his back and raises his head. His face is already a deep red and strings of spit hang from his mouth as he grabs at the rope, trying to relieve the pressure on his throat, trying to catch a breath. The director just jerks again, dragging him ahead faster now, dragging him across the grass on his belly, and Ron’s fingers slip off the lasso uselessly.

  Caleb is leaping off the step, knife in hand, ready to cut Ron free, but before his feet even hit the ground, one of the sleepers strikes him in midair, slamming him in the head with the butt of its pistol. Caleb falls back on the steps. Before he can rise, the other sleepwalker is on him too. They each grab one of his arms. He tries to break free, but no matter how much he struggles, he can’t move even an inch. They pull his arms behind his back and pain shoots through his shoulders and his injured wrist. He winces, dizzy and out of breath. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the director working fast. In the next instant, he’s bound Ron’s hands with the same rope that’s looped around his neck, so that if Ron struggles with his arms, it automatically applies choking pressure on his throat.

  From the edge of the woods comes the sound of applause, many hands clapping. The megaphone says: “THAT WAS FAN-TASTIC ROPIN’, COWPOKE. I’D LIKE TO SEE THAT ONE AGAIN IN SLO-MO.”

  The director gives a gracious wave.

  “That,” he says, “was the fun way. Now . . . ” He looks at the trailer’s darkened window.

  “I know my beautiful little friend Christine is in there. Come out and bring your friends with you or—”

  And the sleepers put their pistols to both Caleb’s temples. The director pulls on the length of rope running between Ron’s wrists and his throat, pulling it so tight he can’t even make a gurgling sound. His eyes are red with burst blood vessels.

  “The easy way or the fun way, Christine. Everybody has to go sometime; all you can do is choose how. I want all three of you out here—now.”

  And the door opens. Christine steps out, followed by the witch, followed by a reluctant Margie, who hangs back in the doorway.

  “My sweet Christine,” says the director. “I’ve missed you ever so much.”

  Over the director’s shoulder, Christine watches in horror as the sleepwalkers emerge from the line of trees. When she was in the hospital, it was impossible to gauge how many patients were there. They were all kept apart, fed in their rooms and let out only for therapy. Now she sees there are hundreds of them, filling the woods on all sides of the trailer. And they’re coming.

  “I have one sacrifice here, this miserable wretch of a man, Mr. Ron Bent, so the good news is I only need one more,” says the director, smiling. Ron expels a spray of spit and gasps a rasping breath before the director jerks the rope taut again.

  “So now it’s up to you, sweet Christine. Who do we take? Mommy? The old bag of a waitress? Or sweet little you?”

  “I ain’t going nowhere,” murmurs Margie.

  “Sweet little me,” says Christine. “You already took Anna, didn’t you? Why not take both sisters and have a matching set?”

  “Yes, I did take Anna. She was the first. She was . . . a necessary ingredient in our little soul pie. And it’s very noble to offer yourself as the last. I’m proud of you.” He turns to the sleepers with their guns on Caleb’s head. “Shall we?”

  The guns snap toward the steps in perfect unison.

  “CHRISTINE,” yells Caleb, but his arms are still held in the sleepers’ iron grips.

  Both guns bark together.

  Christine closes her eyes. She hears the gunshots as they come, hears the giddy murmur of the dead all around her. But no pain comes. When her eyes open, she already knows what’s happened but still turns her head to see for herself:

  On the steps behind her, Margie’s kneecaps have exploded. The waitress pitches sideways off the steps, hitting the ground headfirst.

  She doesn’t scream; the only sound she utters is a breathy groan.

  Sleepwalkers surround her in an instant, like a pack of dogs. Christine looks on in horror, expecting them to tear Margie apart, but instead they pick her up gently and bear her up over their heads.

  More come and pick up Ron the same way. One holds the rope, always keeping the pressure on Ron’s throat.

  The director just looks at Christine and smiles.

  “It’s not your time to choke yet,” he says. “But it’s coming.”

  One by one, each of the army of pale, sleeping teenagers and children falls in step and disappears into the woods.

  The witch stands looking on, utterly expressionless. Christine wrenches the knife from her mother’s grip but remains there, standing on steps, her chest heaving big, furious breaths, with no idea in the world what to do.

  “No! Take me!” she shouts.

  The director cocks his head.

  “Patience,” he says.

  At the foot of the steps, the sleepers release Caleb and simply walk away. Caleb rises and goes for his knife.

  The director gives him a bemused look.

  “Stabbing me now? Et tu, Billy? If only it were that easy.” He turns away. “I’ll see you both soon,” he calls over his shoulder.

  “You’re not getting away with this!” Christine screams, and she charges the director with her knife.

  The director wheels, another lasso already swinging in his grip.

  He flicks his wrist and the rope almost seems to have a mind of its own as it flits through the air and jerks the knife out of Christine’s hand. He whips the rope around over his head, then swings it back at Christine. The knife, caught in the loop of the lasso, whips toward her with incredible speed. It makes a tiny “tick” sound as it passes her face, and that’s all. She falls to her knees.

  Caleb takes a step forward to go to her but is cut off by three lingering sleepers, who hiss at him fearsomely.

  When the director flicks his wrist again, the knife jerks into his left hand and the lasso winds itself into a neat loop in his right.

  “Not now, my sweet Christine. Soon. We’ll all be together again soon—you, me, and Billy. I promise.” He blows her a kiss, and flanked by sleepwalkers, turns and disappears into the woods.

  In an instant, Caleb is kneeling in front of Christine.

  His heart is throbbing. He doesn’t know what he’s going to see when he looks at her face, what hideous disfigurement or fatal wound he will find there, but he’s trembling just thinking of the possibilities.

  “Are you okay?” he asks as he arrives at her side, breathless.

  “No,” she says, through tears.

  And he looks at her frantically. First at her eyes—both there, both dark and beautiful and intact—then her throat; it’s unblemished by blood.

  He squints in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

  “Can’t you see?” she says. “It’s horrible.”

  He keeps looking, seeing nothing.

  “What?” he asks desperately. “What?”

  “He cut off a bunch of my hair,” she says, clearly in shock from the sight she just witnessed.

  Caleb looks closer. A chunk of her long, dark hair has indeed been chopped off—and her only other injury is a tiny scratch just in front of
her ear, which oozes one huge tear of blood.

  Caleb laughs and pulls her to him and hugs her tight.

  “Do I look horrible?” she asks, sounding numb.

  Laughing with relief, he says, “You look gorgeous.”

  She pulls away from him.

  “We have to get Margie and Ron back,” she says.

  He takes her hands in his and squeezes them. “We will. I swear.”

  On the porch, the witch is on her hands and knees, scrubbing Margie’s blood and tiny, shattered bits of kneecap off the steps, and humming.

  Chapter Eighteen

  KNEELING IN A FIELD OF STARS, this might be the night the world was made. Crickets chirp, the night breeze rustles leaves overhead, and all else holds its breath. In the dark, two childhood friends embrace. This might be Adam and Eve in the Garden. This might be the beginning of the world instead of the end of it.

  “We’ll fix all this,” says Caleb, only half believing his own words. Then: “What is it?”

  Christine stares hard at nothing. Finally, she says: “The voices—I can’t hear them anymore.”

  “They’re gone?” he asks.

  “No. Still here, but . . . quiet. Like they’re waiting for something. For the end.”

  “Then let’s finish it.”

  They help each other off the dew-soaked ground. The Spanish moss hanging from ancient, dying oak trees, the strangling kudzu, the serpentine tendrils of mist creeping from the forest all around them: everything is a shroud. Hiding the truth. Hiding the future. Hiding any chance they might have had at a pleasant life full of denial and the appearance of happiness, a normal life. Now, even if they perform a miracle and somehow make it out of this ghost town alive, they’ll be forever haunted. Maybe figuratively, maybe literally.

  They listen to the squeal of bats overhead. They enter the circle of light cast from the windows of the squat little trailer, mount the steps—still splattered here and there with blood and bits of bone. They open the screen door. And Caleb freezes, listening.

  There is a moaning sound, so soft it could be the creak of a tree trunk in the wind. Except it’s not.

  He grabs Christine’s arm. “Do you hear it?”

  She’s still for a moment.

  “I think we should go inside,” she says. “It’s not safe out here.”

  But Caleb is already ignoring her, already heading down the steps, around the corner, to the dark side of the trailer where the moonlight won’t even go.

  And he stops in front of the cellar door.

  “It’s coming from in here,” he says.

  “Don’t open it, Caleb. I’m serious. I have a really bad feeling. The dead are screaming not to open it.” Pain is in her voice, and she has her hands clamped to her ears—but Caleb is deaf to her, his eyes transfixed by the door. From its latch, a big, rusting padlock hangs.

  He turns, looking for something, anything that might help him break the lock, then sees it. A hatchet waits, stuck in a log on the far side of the lawn, framed in moonlight, and Caleb brushes past Christine. Now he’s running to the hatchet, yanking it free, now shrugging off Christine’s restraining hand.

  And chopping at the lock on the door.

  “Billy, no!” Christine says. “It has to stay locked.”

  Why should I trust her? he thinks suddenly. She, who just tried to kill Ron. This could be a trick, a ploy. His father could be locked up in there.

  “Everyone calls me Caleb now,” Billy says.

  And he chops.

  “The voices say the devil is in there! They say you’ll set him free!”

  Caleb growls, eyes narrowed: “The voices make people disappear, Christine. You think we can trust them?”

  “They also saved our lives,” she says.

  Caleb is chopping.

  He says: “And can you tell the difference between the ones that want to help and the ones that hurt? What if they’re lying to you? You ever think of that?”

  “They said you’d say that,” she says, backing away from him one step. “They predicted all of this. They said you’d betray us!”

  Caleb stays his hand for a moment, looks at her.

  “Who’s down in this basement? Do you know?”

  She just stares at him.

  “Why are you trying to stop me? Your mother locked somebody in here. Who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then we have to find out. It could be anybody. Could be a kid, for Christ’s sake!”

  “That’s not what the voices say.”

  “It could be my dad!”

  Caleb starts hacking at the lock again.

  “Billy,” Christine says, “they all say you’ll help him bring about the end. They say you’re the one who’ll make it happen.”

  “I would never do that, Christine.”

  “Maybe you already are.”

  Silence settles between them, one more black shroud.

  Sparks fall, and the hammering blows of the hatchet fill the forest. The moon passes behind a cloud, the lock falls, and Christine walks away.

  Caleb doesn’t notice her leave. He’s pulling on the rusted handle, pulling back the peeling wood cellar door, smelling the rot and must behind it.

  Inside, an abyss.

  He’s terrified to look into the blackness, terrified to look away. He has no light. But something makes him take the first step down into the dank cellar. Something makes him take the second. And he wonders suddenly if he’s being drawn down by his own will, or the will of a thousand malevolent demons. The urge to run fills him suddenly with the urgency of vomit rising in the throat.

  But he will not run.

  It’s too late, anyway. He’s in the dark now.

  The wet, sickly smell of decay surrounds him, making him shiver. He reaches the bottom of the stairs and steps into liquid up to his ankles.

  Something is brushing his face. He keeps swatting it away, but it keeps coming back; cobwebs, or something worse. He’s suddenly about to cry; he just wants to leave, just wants to wake up from this nightmare that somewhere took a wrong turn and became real. And . . .

  And he isn’t alone.

  Amongst the rustle of chains comes a dry, sharp whisper.

  “If you’ve come to kill me, you’re wasting your time,” it says. “I’m already dead.”

  There’s no way of telling where the voice comes from. It echoes from all around him.

  Caleb opens his mouth, but terror has robbed him of his breath.

  “Are you the devil?” he asks finally.

  The laugh comes like the crackle of dry leaves.

  “Well, I’m sure not God.”

  Caleb doesn’t know what to say.

  “You think you’re a very brave boy, don’t you?” says the devil.

  Outside, a storm is blowing in. Rain begins pattering and builds until even from underground. Caleb can hear the drops pounding relentlessly.

  “You wanted to save the world . . .”

  “Who are you?” says Caleb, “If you’re my father, then say so. And if you’re really the devil . . . ” He wants to finish, but doesn’t know how. “You can’t have me,” he says finally.

  The laughter cracks. “Certainty is like a straitjacket, kid, and you need both hands. Now stop asking questions and listen; our time is short.”

  Caleb shivers. Glancing over his shoulder, he sees nothing. All around him the darkness is total. He might be in outer space or the Mariana Trench. He might not be at all. He can’t see the cellar door. He can’t see anything.

  “Listen, if you would undo what’s been done here, I’m going to tell you the story of Jonathan Morle. This is the first and the last time anyone will tell it, so pay close attention.”

  Caleb does.

  “Morle grew up in Boston. He was a sad kid, tried killing himself several times before he was even fifteen. Maybe that’s what happens to the son of a Harvard professor and a whore.

  “After his mother died of syphilis, he broke into his father�
��s house. He found him in his study asleep and strangled him, then hung him from a rafter. Next, he found the old professor’s wife and two grandchildren, killed them with a fire poker and hung them up as well. Most of the police thought it was a murder-suicide, that the professor did it, that it was the work of a brilliant but slightly insane intellectual. But not all of the cops were convinced. And one of the detectives came after Jonathan.

  “With no money and no means to flee, Morle joined the merchant marines, boarded a freight ship, and departed immediately for the farthest ports this world offered. He went around the globe, from

  Amsterdam to Cape Town, Bangkok to Sydney.

  “His shipmates described him as a quiet man with a beautiful singing voice. He didn’t drink alcohol, didn’t care much for prostitutes, stayed away from fights. But at every port he landed, a family was found dead, hung from the rafters of their house. Nobody on his ship knew about that. It didn’t even hit the local papers until they had weighed anchor and left port. The only strange thing about Jonathan Morle, his shipmates said, was that he seemed to collect a clock at every stop.

  “Morle finally landed in San Francisco where he was accepted at the University of California, Berkeley. Fellow students characterized him as handsome, pale, distracted, articulate, and punctual. He was three years into a degree in psychology when the law once again caught up with him. This time, since the sea no longer seemed safe for him, he chose the most desolate place he could think of within the United States. He moved to a small town a hundred miles west of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and took the only job he could find working as a rodeo clown.”

  “The director,” says Caleb.

  The voice continues: “He lived there for three years. Locals didn’t say much about him, except that he read a lot of books and kept to himself. He rented an abandoned trailer on the outskirts of town and never seemed to leave except on rodeo days. That went on for almost two years, until one day he was gored in the head by a bull and nearly killed.

  “After that, he disappeared. He didn’t surface again for a long time.

  Most of the police who had been pursuing him had long since given up the chase by now. But not one. Finally, that detective’s persistence paid off. Morle turned up in Chicago, this time under an assumed name. He had received a law degree from the University of Chicago. But just as he began his first job with one of Chicago’s top law firms, friends began to see a change in him. Maybe it was due to head trauma from the rodeo days and maybe something else, but Morle— though they knew him by another name—became more and more reclusive. Soon he wouldn’t leave his apartment. He would simply sit in his room, surrounded with his collection of clocks, and not move for days. Following a suicide attempt, he was institutionalized. It was just after he was released that he learned the detective was on his trail again, closer than ever. So he fled to Florida and checked himself into a mental hospital in a small town called Hudsonville, again under an assumed name. It was there the detective finally caught up to him. But by then it was too late.”